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To the Paradise Gardens in Victoria Park on Sunday to take part in and watch Sensazione. You can watch the video on the YouTube link. It's a combination of improvised performance and fairground, with a twist: all the rides are human powered. The big wheel is driven by two punters in giant hamster wheels, the lights on the bar and the spinning hall of mirrors for the fortune teller is spun by stationary bikers, the waltzer turns on the power of people trudging around. We made our own entertainment. The workers got paid in discs which they can exchange for booze, like farm labourers being paid in cider. But they would have done it all the same - the sheer bravado got people pedaling and walking.
But having been brainwashed by sustainability, I was unable to simply enjoy myself and let go. I got thinking about the end of oil. Given that a barrel of oil 'contains' 25,000 man hours of work, will our entertainment be a bit more like this when we run out of coal juice? The tantalising glimpse wasn't bad. Of course, the actors, each with their tics and tales - the complex relationships, the monomaniacal tap dancing girl, who would try to steal the limelight from whoever else was performing - would errupt at regular intervals and made us feel part of Something. But there was also the silence where you could hear people laughing and screaming, there was the connection between funseekers and human motors, there was definitely a sense of community - and of course there was the fact that the people operating the rides were cheerful and chatty when they normally are so amplified, pumping some manic techno and shouting at best, in control of the ride; and at worst miserable or skeevy, looking like they want to retreat to their caravan.
So there was a hint of the situation which is normally oil-driven, instead being more in touch with human kind and at least for that evening, I think a lot of us felt more magic than in a World of Disneylands. Perhaps speed, flashing lights and ever-wilder sensations don't make us happier than interacting with other smiling and laughing people, after all. Could it be life after oil will be happier, whatever else?
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